Swimming in Florida's Blue Spring [March 28-30, 2016]

Russ over the Spring opening

13 months after we initially set out for Florida in February 2015, we arrived in Jacksonville to visit Dana’s Aunt.  We had a lovely Easter together, and visited Jacksonville Beach.  Lucky Aunt, she lives only 12 blocks away from the beach. 

One of the Entry Points

The next day we headed out to Blue Spring State Park north of Orlando.  If you are ever visiting Orlando and get tired of Disney, you really need to give this spot a visit.  Blue Spring is a Magnitude 1 spring, and it pumps 101 Million gallons of 72 degree water out of the Florida Aquifer each day.  In the winter about 200 Manatees live in the Spring and the Run because the water is warm.  After the Manatees leave, millions of human visitors swim in the refreshing fresh water.  It is a prime spot for SCUBA and free divers.

Looking up the Run

First a word on Springs.  The Florida Aquifer collects water underneath coastal South Carolina, all of Georgia and all of Florida.  Whenever it rains, the water that soaks into the soil makes its way through the porous limestone into a maze of underground rivers and lakes.  In central Florida there are about 700 places where the limestone has collapsed, causing a sink hole, and opening rock fissures to the aquifer.  Pressure from the weight of the water in the aquifer pushes water up to the surface.  At Blue Spring they call the basin where the water comes up to the surface, the Boil.  The water then follows down the Run to the St. John’s River. 

The sink hole at the Boil

On Monday, we walked along the side of the Boil and the Run down to the River.  We were disappointed that the Manatees had left just 2 weeks before.  It was a hot day, and we noticed the many swimmers renting floating tubes and cooling off as they were pushed down the Run by the current of the Spring.

The dark gash in the middle is the opening

So Tuesday, we got out our snorkel gear, rented tubes and entered the Spring.  The spot where you get in is downstream from the Boil, so you have to swim or walk against the current to get there.  The opening is like a great gash in the bottom of the pool.  Several large trees have fallen across it.  The caves beneath the gash extend down 120 feet.

The opening - 101 Million gallons of water pump through each day

Dana snorkel tubing

We snorkeled around, watching divers, and taking pictures.  When we got tired we floated down to the put-in spot and rested and had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  Nourished and refreshed, we went back in and spent another hour or so exploring the Spring from the surface.  When we were done, we made a leisurely float the length of the Run that is open for swimming and then walked back to get our towels.  

SCUBA divers coming up from the cave

Entering the Boil

The Spring is very lovely with Palm, Palmetto, and Live Oak (with Spanish Moss) trees around it.  The area of the Boil is a sinkhole with sides that go straight up like a deep bowl.  Laughter and shrieks echo off of the sides.  As you float along the Run, you pass under branches dripping Spanish Moss.  Very exotic.

Free diver

Kismet and Kayaks – Oak Island NC [March 25, 2016]

 

 
The best friends are the ones that you feel that you saw only yesterday instead of 10 years ago.  As we were heading toward South Carolina, Robin and Steve were already there.  Robin posted a photo from their South Carolina vacation on Facebook, and Dana added a comment about being on our way there to meet them.  Wait, chimed in Wendy, you are practically in our backyard, come visit us.  WHAT!?!?  Yes, said Wendy, we’ve retired to Oak Island and we would love to see you.  So would we love to see you, Robin and Dana both replied.

So on Friday, the four of us descended on Oak Island to visit Wendy and Mike who retired there 10 years ago.  Back in the day we had kids swimming for the Fairfax Frogs summer swim team and all volunteered our collective hearts out for the team. Between us we have 3 sons within 18 months of age of each other and 3 daughters within 2 years.  We had raised our kids together at the side of the pool.  It was sooooo very wonderful to be together again.  After 30 minutes of catching up on kid-news (and what accomplished and interesting kids we have, too!), we settled in to just enjoying being together.

After a scrumptious lunch [thanks Wendy], we said goodbye to Mike who went to work at his occasional job at a local wine shop, and the rest of us went kayaking along the Slough that also runs behind their lovely home.  It was low tide, so Wendy took us on a paddle that would limit our potential of getting stuck in paralyzing mud.  Though we did run aground once, and then another time lost track of time as we rested and visited on a sand bar as the tide ran out around us leaving high and (not quite) dry, we were never truly stuck.

Wendy lines us up for a selfie...

...and here's the selfie

We saw homes and docks along one side of the Slough and cormorants, gulls, terns, skimmers, egrets, oystercatchers and pelicans along the sandbanks and marsh grass on the other.  We talked and took selfies and enjoyed our precious time together.  When it was time to leave, Wendy said, Come back soon.  Four voices said, We will.

Drying their wings.

Huntington Beach SP (SC) and Brookgreen Gardens with Friends [March 24, 2016]

One of life’s great joys is sharing special places with good friends.  Over the years we’ve had a chance to visit many such places with our friends Steve and Robin, so it was wonderful to be able to meet them as we returned for the third time to Huntington Beach State Park.  Steve and Robin were vacationing in Myrtle Beach and we were heading south for our long awaited Florida vacation. 

We started the day with the requisite long walk along the beach admiring the surf, the warm weather, the pelicans, the shorebirds, and our good fortune to be on such a pretty beach on such a pretty day!  After a quick picnic lunch, we walked along the marsh boardwalk at low tide admiring the tiny, busy crabs excavating their tiny crab holes, the warm weather, the wading birds, and our good fortune to be out in the marsh on such a pretty day!  [Have you noticed a trend?] It was here that we took our traditional selfie.

Across the street from the park are the Brookgreen Gardens.  Once also part of the Huntington’s (for whom the state park is named) estate, the Gardens were planned by Mr. and Mrs. Huntington as a place to showcase (Mrs.) Anna Hyatt Huntington’s sculptures.  It has evolved to be the largest sculpture garden in the world (9,100 acres – though much of that is wetland), with thousands of figurative sculptures set among lovely plantings, fountains and pools of water.  The sculptures are eclectic in topic, style, and era.  They are brooding and boisterous, sleek and ornate, metal and stone.  You can sit on a park bench next to a sculpture of a man reading a newspaper.  You can contemplate a dazed Don Quixote riding his gaunt horse.  The Gardens are huge and uplifting and exhausting.  We didn’t see nearly all of it.

A high point of the Gardens are a boat tour through the reclaimed rice paddies that were once part of the 4 failed rice plantations that the Huntingtons purchased in the 1920s.  The narrator talks about the history of rice cultivation in that area.  It took 7 years for enslaved workers to clear the wetland of all plants including digging up the roots, and then building dikes around the 40 acres to make a rice paddy.  This is before the first grain of seed rice went into the soil.  All surrounded by exhausting heat, malaria carrying mosquitoes, poisonous snakes, and alligators.  Sobering and awful.  Interestingly, many of the successful innovations in rice agriculture which made this area so profitable were rice growing techniques brought by the slaves from their homes in West Africa.  The county where these plantations were located had 20,000 inhabitants at the height of rice production – 18,000 of whom were slaves.  Between the historical information he also pointed out interesting birds and creatures we saw along the way.

The design for this trunk that lets water in and out of the paddy, came from Africa

Foot weary and satisfied we went to the Inlet Crab House in Murrells Inlet for dinner, followed by a walk along the Marsh Walk there.  Dana’s total steps for the day - 16,900.

 

 

 

 

 



 

Full Moon Over the Atlantic - So Bright it Cast a Shadow

Morning Moon over the ShoreXplorer

Basking 'Gator from the Boat Tour